Living With Diabetes: Diabetes Dangers From Head to Toe

On today’s edition of living with diabetes, we look at the many complications diabetes sufferers can face…

Ron Caporale:Picture a future where you could be blind, need a kidney transplant or might need to have your leg amputated. Well, that’s the reality for thousands of people living with diabetes, a complex disease that affects your entire body. Unchecked, this disease can harm your eyesight and other vital organs, which is why avoiding complications associated with the disease is so important. Lifescript’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ed Geehr, is here with straight talk on diabetes complications.

OK, so lots to talk about here. Let’s jump right in. What are the complications that diabetes sufferers have to worry about?

Ed Geehr, M.D.: Well the worst ones, really, are the ones that affect the eyes, the heart and the kidneys. So you do begin to lose your eyesight and can lose it altogether. It can lead to heart failure and heart attacks, cardiac arrest and kidney failure. So those are the three classic problems you get with diabetes.

In addition, you’ve heard about wounds that people get on their feet and so forth – that’s because they really lose their vascular supply and they can’t feel when there’s a problem. The nerves are affected also, so they don’t have the sensation in their feet – if they’ve got a problem that you or I might notice right away.

Ron Caporale: Now, are all of these complications inevitable, or is there something you can do about them?